By Mrs. Lindsay Patterson
Politics is without exception the most absolutely fascinating grab bag in existence. That is what it is and all it is to the candidate for office and only an idiot would ever consider it anything else. To take one’s entire happiness on drawing the big prize is to kiss happiness a fond farewell. But if one is content to take what comes (and what comes is always thrilling one way or another) for sheer human interest commend me to politics.
Poor Queen Mary said when she died “Calais” would be graven on her heart. On mine will be the names of the men who nominated me for Congress and the outcome in November will make no change in my feeling. They have given me the most interesting six months and very nearly the pleasantest of my life. I owe to them a winder knowledge of my State and its need and possibilities; a deeper pride in its achievements; a stronger faith in its future and best of all, a number of new friends who will go with me to the end of life’s journey, friends I could have gained in no other way. Grateful to my party for my nomination? I could kiss it for what it has given me and I don’t care who knows it.
The Fifth District
The Fifth District, one of the three largest in the United States, is really too large for anything less energetic than a cyclone to get over it but I did the best I could considering “The Imperial Fifth,” (and it is well named), is composed of Forsyth, Guilford, Alamance, Person, Stokes, Surry, Granville, Caswell, Orange, Rockingham and Durham. I have spent a week in each and have traveled over 9,000 miles chasing Democratic votes. After I settle down in normalcy a friend of mine has promised to cout up and see how much each Democrat has cost me in gasoline. However it couldn’t be helped. I want to go to Congress more than I have ever wanted anything, and I can’t go unless my Democratic friends vote for me.
And this is just as good a time as any to say that I am not in the least ashamed of asking Democrats to vote for me for from all I have heard from them this summer, they need me in Congress just as much as the Republicans, that is, if they want work done. If I do say it that shouldn’t, all the Democrats living and dead, can’t get more for the Fifth District than they are getting now while the first woman Republican Congresswoman from the South would have the strength of the entire Republican party back of her for selfish reasons if for no other. Also while I am on the subject of a woman in Congress, to which many men object, thinking her inexperience an insuperable objection, it may be as well to tell them that I have had 20 years experience at the head of various women’s organizations, and any woman who can go through that without batting an eye, can win out with both hands tied where men are concerned. What the men folks can’t realize is that during the 6,000 years we women have been occupying the back seats we have had plenty f time to consider the rules f the game and how to profit by the mistakes. Men have been too deeply engaged in scuffling for a living to have had time for much over thinking and this is said in all kindness and all due respect and with(?) a great deal of genuine affection for all of them from us.
Grandmother’s Position
Because our grandmothers didn’t vote is no reason why we shouldn’t. If we go back to grandma in one thing, let’s go in all, and dress up the men in hickory bark jeans, tow linen shirts and walnut brown socks which grandma knits by a light wood fire. Also let’s make soft soap in a kettle out in the backyard; get mail once a month; never travel by train while depending on the ancient Conestoga wagons to move freight.
Love Their Homes
Women love their homes, their families and their country, and the ballot is only a very powerful way, indeed the only way, of doing whit is best for them and also of changing what is worst. We women represent half the intelligence of the world and we shall be held responsible if we fail to use it. The woman in politics, which is only another expression for the woman in government, is as old as Bible days. God called the first woman prophet to do His will in saving His chosen people long before men ever allowed her to chirp. Deborah sat under her palm tree judging Israel, saving it as a nation and then made good roads and the Bible comments on her political wisdom and efficiency, has so far as I know, ever been repeated in summing up any man’s work “the land has rest for 40 years.” Forty years of peace was her gift to her land.
Now there is no statute of limitations on Deborah’s example any more than there is on that of the repentance of the dying thief. There was one of each and while men have been taking a lot of solid comfort in that old thief (I really believe he is the most popular of all the Bible characters), Deborah is the least known. She owes a great deal to me, however, for I have certainly brought her before the public many times and oft.
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From page 11 of The Winston-Salem Journal, Sunday, Oct. 8, 1922
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